The Provincial Government Building in Antwerp, designed by Xaveer De Geyter Architects, is a photogenic and impressive building. Engineers from the German firm Bollinger Grohmann devised an ingenious structure that keeps the tower standing whilst also taking into account the building’s unusual shape.

In 1960, Ada Louise Huxtable summed up the successful balance between structure and architecture in a single sentence: “The fusion of structural function and abstract form creates the kind of building that is so fundamentally right that all other architecture seems superficial by comparison.” Huxtable was referring to the section of the Torino Esposizioni, the stadium and exhibition hall in Turin, designed by Pier Luigi Nervi in 1948. “The large arched ribs visibly combine their forces in the fan-shaped ribs on the sides of the hall and transfer these forces to the robustly elegant buttresses beneath.” What matters is that buildings demonstrate their victory in the battle against gravity, without coming across as overly triumphant or heavy-handed, but also without pretending that nothing is amiss.